The 45-year-old suspect was carrying gold weighing up to 1kg and was held after one of the customs officials found him walking suspiciously. He was bound for India but was stopped at Colombo's international airport.

The official then checked the man using metal detectors and identified the hidden luggage, "carefully packed in polythene bags and neatly inserted".

"Among that there were four yellow gold biscuits, three pieces of yellow gold, six yellow gold jewellery articles and two silver plated yellow gold jewellery articles," a customs spokesman told The BBC.

This comes two days after a woman was held at the Bandaranaike International Airport in the Sri Lankan city of Katunayake. She was reportedly trying to smuggle 314.5gm of gold worth over 1.5 million rupees.

She was released after paying a pay a fine of 100,000 rupees.

Smuggling things while hiding in the rectum is not uncommon these days. Last week, a Canadian man pleaded guilty to trafficking drugs after he shoved eight Kinder Eggs containing cannabis and MDMA up in his rectum.

The 22-year-old had put 59 grams of marijuana and one gram of MDMA into eight Kinder Surprise plastic 'inner eggs'. He then managed to push all of them into his rectum. He was sentenced to two years in prison on 18 September.